Wanderfoot Part 15

"Never mind ... never mind ... poor Val!" Sternness had gone from him.

"Well, that is settled, then--I go back without you." He got up heavily and turned away from the fire.

"I 'm dead-beat and must get rest, Val. Haidee has fixed me up very well in her nice little room; she told me you always meant me to have it."

He turned and looked at her, in his eyes a sudden bitterness and anger born of his longing to take into his arms and crush to him this woman who exiled him from her heart.

"Do you think it is quite fair, Val? Do you think you are playing the game?"

She looked at him with wistful, harried eyes.

"I am trying to, Joe--I----"

What could she say? Was this the moment to stab him with the truth?

While she hesitated wretchedly, he turned away again, walking round the room, looking fiercely at the pictures and chintzes he knew had belonged to her past life.

"Haidee is growing into a nice girl," he said abruptly, switching his mind from a subject that maddened him.

Val, by the fire struggling with her misery and half-formed resolution, looked at him vaguely for a moment. Ah! he was speaking of Haidee--while she was torturing herself with the thought that he wanted her as she wanted him!

"Good-night!" he said harshly, and went his way up-stairs, without attempting to kiss her. She crouched down by the dying fire, and covered her face with her hands. Her heart was in great pain: the great pain of a little child. Footsteps overhead told her that he went first to her bedroom to take a last glimpse of Bran, and low murmurs betrayed the fact that Haidee was not yet asleep. At last his light, firm tread crossed the floor once more, then came the sound of his closing door.

Another hour must have pa.s.sed when Val, still sitting by the fire, was startled to hear the patter of feet on the bare oak stairs, then to find a slim night-gowned figure beside her.

"Haidee!"

"I wanted to tell you something, Val, and was afraid I 'd be asleep before you came up."

"What is it?"

"Garry found all your empty brandy bottles in the dell; we were hunting the rats there with Billy and King." Her big brown eyes rested commiseratingly on Val. It was evident she felt guilty for having led Westenra to the dell, her very look of guilt had in it something d.a.m.ning to the poor pale culprit sitting there with a sick heart, no trace on her of the victory she had achieved two weeks ago. She had believed her sin as secret as her victory over it. Yet here it rose up against her in Haidee's eyes. The child knew nothing of the victory--only of the vice, though Val had never felt herself observed. And now Garry knew!

That was the reason then of their embarra.s.sed looks and averted eyes!

"Of course he didn't say anything. He pretended he did n't notice even.

But you should have seen his face." She gazed dismally at Val. It was as though they had offended G.o.d. "And you smelt awfully of brandy when you came in--you do still."

"Go to bed, Haidee," said Val at last, sick with humiliation. She had meant to tell of the brandy episode some day, in some dear moment when all was clear between them once more. Now, through being accidentally betrayed, the incident had a.s.sumed a horrible aspect. She was afraid to think of what his thoughts on the subject must be. She longed to tell him all. To run up-stairs and cry at his door: "I didn't drink it all, Garry; two of the bottles were full when I threw them away." How silly and puerile that would sound. He would, perhaps, see nothing in her action but the terror of a confirmed drinker found out, might imagine that he had married a secret drunkard! She sat twisting her hands in an agony of misery. How could she tell him? What was the good? How dared she even kiss him as she had done when she came in? Valdana was alive--she was not even Joe's wife--what to do--what to do? ... How brutal life was!

Suddenly she fell to communing with her dead--those who had loved and believed in her and knew that however much she had failed in the heavy trials and afflictions of the last year, at least she had not been actuated by meanness or mere self-indulgence. _They_ knew her as she used to be--fearless and sure of her actions--before love had laid bonds on her spirit, and sorrow and failure crushed her down. They understood, and would not altogether condemn. At last, curiously strengthened, she rose and went up-stairs, the firm purpose in her heart of going to Westenra to tell him everything.

She paused for a moment at his door--doubtless he was sleeping, dead-beat as he said. But that could not be helped. It was more important even than his sleep that all should be put right between them.

She owed it to herself as well as to him. Softly she turned the handle of the door, but it did not open to her touch. Westenra had guarded himself against invasion. It was locked.

At breakfast the next morning he announced that he was due in London in two days' time to deliver some lectures at one of the hospitals. After that he must make a visit to Ireland on a matter concerning some family property. He added vaguely that he should probably come back again to Jersey before very long, but Val took that for what it was--a bone thrown to Haidee, whose face had visibly lengthened and darkened on hearing this horrible news. Bran, smiling in his mother's arms, looked on affably--his father's comings and goings meant little to him as yet, so long as he had Val's soft cheek to rub his own against. She was very pale, but extraordinarily composed, and made no comment on his plans.

She had withdrawn herself into some remote and distant land of her own--a land where no birds sang, nor flowers grew! After breakfast she left the others, and went about her household duties. A conference in the garden between Westenra and Haidee resulted in a resolution to walk down to St. Aubin's and hire bicycles for a day's outing. Haidee was strong as a Basuto pony, and Westenra loved nothing better than to be out in the open air. The bicycling is hilly in Jersey, and the two came home tired out in the evening. Haidee announced that they had done their side of the Island from Corbieres to Plemmont Caves, and intended next day to visit Bouley Bay, Archirondelle, and the famous breakwater that cost half a million pounds and is of no more use than a load of rotten hay.

After the usual bath parade, at which Bran presided, Val once more had the fireside and her thoughts to herself. Haidee and Westenra, tired out, were glad to seek their beds.

The next day they started early. While Val was cutting sandwiches for them, Westenra half suggested that she should come too; but she smiled quite naturally, and said that even if there were any one to stay with Bran, it was so long since she had cycled she would only be a drag to them. "But I hope you will not be so tired to-night, Garrett," she finished quietly. "I want to have a little talk with you after dinner."

"Very well," he answered, looking at her curiously. He could not pretend to begin to understand her, or what she meant or wanted. He only knew that he, too, had something to say before he left Jersey the next day. Though outwardly he was composed, and in the company of Haidee even gay, affecting great interest in their excursions, his heart was heavy as a stone in him, and he was brooding over his wrongs as only an Irishman can. As it happened, rain began to fall heavily after lunch, and somewhat early in the afternoon the two cyclists returned wet and cross. Westenra bathed, and immediately began to pack his things for departure by the next morning's boat. The rest of the afternoon was spent with the children.

The sky had cleared by evening, and when after dinner Val and Westenra walked across the fields towards the cliff in the pale, clear, evening light, they could see the tide furling and unfurling its filmy laces of froth on St. Brelade's beach.

Though she had come out with a set purpose she found it hard to begin what she had to say. For all her remote manner and outward calm, her heart, throbbing full, bounded in her breast and beat in her throat until she felt suffocating. It was Westenra who spoke at last very gently, but with something of a requiem note in his words.

"So you see our love was not strong enough after all to weather the storms, Val!"

"Mine was ... mine is," her heart cried out, but she looked at him dully. She knew the futility of such words now. It was his own dead love he was keening, not hers.

"Our s.h.i.+p of dreams has gone to pieces."

"No," burst from her lips almost against her will.

"Yes, Val," his gentle tone became stern. "Face the facts."

They had seated themselves on some rocks near the edge of the cliff.

Nothing broke the peace of the evening but the swirr and swish of the gentle tide on the beach below.

"You promised to burn your boats ... never to go back to old habits and possessions ... I find you with your old possessions about you----"

"Those pictures and chintzes? I wrote and told you how they came," she interrupted. "They can be burnt for all they are to me."

He moved his hand with a desperate gesture.

"That is nothing to the other. Can you deny that you have returned to one at least of your old habits?"

"Oh!" she cried, and sat up like one who has been struck. But his heart was full of fury, outraged hopes, and disappointment. He could not measure his words because she cried out.

"It was not your boats you burned, but my s.h.i.+p--my s.h.i.+p of dreams!"

He went further, he accused her of breaking his shrine, of succ.u.mbing to a vice that he detested and despised with all his soul. He said she had betrayed his love, and destroyed that quality in it which is essential and eternal.

"One _must_ look up," he said, and looked down on her as she sat there, her face covered with her hands, very still under the torrent of fierce and cruel words that burst from him in the bitterness of outraged love and pride. Like all reserved people when driven into breaking silence he said too much. Afterwards there was a long silence. A curlew flying inland wailed faintly like a dying thing.

"I don't see what is before us," he muttered. "Everything is finished."

And at last she spoke--very quietly.

"Yes, everything is finished of our life together. But each of us is free to begin again."

"Free!" he echoed ironically, thinking of the mystical fatalistic threads that had bound and tangled them together from the first. "You and I will never be free of each other."

"Oh, yes--we are already. Listen! I want to tell you something that I ought to have told you long ago, only I was afraid of ... Ah! never mind of what I was afraid. But now that it is as you have said all over and finished, now that I see very well that not only do you not love me, but that you never have loved me and want nothing so much as to be free of me, I will tell it you--" and she added fiercely, "with pleasure."

"Tell ahead," he said drearily.

"I am not your wife, and never have been. Horace Valdana is alive--has never been dead!"